Pages

You've got AIDS!

 Congrats, I'm giving you the gift of AIDS! Lucky you!

Take the quiz before you jizz.

The video kicks off with a rad 90's intro of flashing colors then hops right into an endless quiz - but don't take my word for it - enjoy the exciting playback!

Bottoms up to Blazers, who I'd like to poz'itively thank for filling in this preservation hole with the last load he dropped.

Rom & scans here.

Preservation Loan #004

A brand new batch of goodies has landed in my inbox, courtesy of Preserve CD-i's better half Blazers. 




Putting the "I"nteractive in CD-i, this lovely batch of "multimedia" is almost entirely rare, and plays to the CD-i's strengths.

We're looking forward to sharing these with you!

Gnomes

 A charming title that certainly falls into the rarer category, Gnomes is a unique multimedia title that harkens back to a time when folklore was embraced in children's media (Dark Crystal, Lord of the Rings).

The more naturalized style of art of Gnomes shines on the retro CD-i platform. The title allows the viewer to step-through the world of gnomes in a hand painted storyboard artwork world. In this manner, Gnomes is the exact kinda title I look forward to discovering on the CD-i.


The Charm

  • A well thought out presentation of Gnome culture around the world.
  • Lovely & creepy Gnome artwork.
  • A quick mini-game here or there.
The Fail
  • There's not a lot to complain about for me here. The one thing I would have liked to see would be a couple mini-games on the main menu. The title doesn't advertise itself as a game, so this may be a bit unfair.

Rom & scan available here.

Special thanks to Blazers for seeing this release properly preserved!


~ PRESERVATION ALERT ~

A Dutch release of this title also exists, "De Kabouter" - if you own an original copy, please reach out to me about getting this properly dumped.



Caesars World of Boxing ~ Mystery!

1) Caesars World of Boxing is a title released in the USA with serial number 310690186-2 (as well as in Europe with different serials, but that's not important here).

2) Ring codes are those little numbers and letters near the center of the disc hole, data side. Part of the Ring Code known as the Mastering Code can often give clues to the software revision of the disc.

Now that we those two facts established... two known mastering codes for Caesars World of boxing are known for USA releases:

  1. 18621209 01!
  2. 18621217 03!
These are each unique software builds. Now notice the bolded part, the end of a mastering code can often indicate the revision released. You may notice there's a missing "02" - here's where you can help - if you own this disc, check for the "02" please! Ping me if you have it!


The mastering code is the most important of all ring codes.
You may also notice the toolstamp "C", this is neat to note, but doesn't contain any pertinent info.

Zelda's Adventure

 I carved out a good 30 minutes to play Zelda's Adventure today for the first time. I found the kitsch of the title charming, but it will be a good while before I pick up the controller again to play this one.

However, the game is something of a hallmark release for the Philips CD-i due to being a Zelda title - and an infamous one at that. It's also has the top commanding CD-i game price on ebay - regularly selling for north of $700.

Other than ebay prices, what makes Z.A. feel different from the CDi releases of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon is the lack of goofy cartoon cutscenes in exchange for live performance ones.

The title was released in Europe and Europe only. The closest thing to a USA release is a Red Label Demonstration Disc bearing a USA serial number of 310-690-229-2 - which is not uncommon on ebay. We're currently looking to acquire a dump of this version, or I'll just buy one eventually.

Z.A. was never released in USA, but here's the promo created in preparation for a planned release.

The game received two proper releases in Europe, both of which feature gameplay in English Language Only.

  • One was released with an 810 0147 serial number, a barcode of 8712581001476, and a booklet and back insert art in English, French, German, and Dutch languages.
  • The other has a serial of 810 0157, with a barcode of 8712581001575, and a booklet and back insert art in English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages.
The two European dumps match. With gameplay being English only, this is not a surprise. They both share the "8100147" serial in their mastering ring code.

Both share the same cover art:
If you see this cover, it's a European release. Even if it's listed on ebay.com from a US seller.



Additionally, here's a Euro pre-production version (dumped and part of the Non-Redump set):





FAKE ALERT!
Fake versions are very popular on ebay. There have been NO REALY WHITE LABEL VARIANTS EVER SPOTTED! All the white labels that have shown up on ebay are CD-Rs and have all the tell-tale signs of being fake.

Your Shipment has Arrived

Cinco kilo from Portugal.

Get your bump key ready son, it's time to start this goddamn party up!

Your shipment has arrived - all these goodies I snatched up for you to enjoy. That's pretty rad ain't it? Dumps and scans will be coming - just for you...



A handful of VCD's courtesy of the great omegalfa.

The gems of the batch that warranted the lot buy:

Zelda's Adventure 810 01570 variant + four Portuguese exclusives.

It's easy to eye-wag your way through the more common looking titles onto the juicy stuff - but among the batch also has a small handful of rare regional variants - Portuguese Asterix, Italian serial 815 Voyeur (matches 810 dump), & similar.

MAJOR LOVE <3 & THANKS to The World of CDi's omegalfa for making this happen. Lots of local coordination and the pain of overseas shipping a big package is much appreciated! An international network has proven priceless in getting the rare variants preserved from all corners of the earth.

Bradley Fighting Vehicle

 Bradley Fighting Vehicle is a helluva interesting CD-i title Blazers unearthed and was gracious enough to share with the unwashed masses. Read here about it on The World of CD-i.

Not quite a tank sim, but I should get a bonus of Russian hits on this page none-the-less.


Here's a video poke-around:

Scans & rom here.

Making the Grade Before the World Fades

BP has too much money to spend, and this is how they're going to do it.


The year was 1995, oil stocks were through the roof and BP had more money that sense. THANK DOG some of that money was put towards a rad CD-i release and decades later Blazers acquired a copy for us to enjoy.

Making the Grade has an American-enough looking front cover, with that trademark Philips strip on the bottom. However plastered with a couple stickers from UK, a UK phone number printed on the case, and a SONOPRESS ring code, this is no doubt a UK release - starring American actors in full-motion-video.

It starts off interesting enough, you're a new employee at BP, you have a rad secretary, and you're ready to hustle your way up the ladder, then... then... THEN... then my console crashes.

It seems that this title just doesn't play well with my American model Philips 910.

I can't wait to see how this title plays out - if you're out there - listening - someone record a video for us! It's the perfect way to kill time until global warming kills us all. Thanks BP.

Rom & scans here. Thanks Blazers! Enjoy all <3

Karaoke Saga: Karaoke Volume 2

Karaoke is a bit of a gray area with gaming preservation. By gaming console, Redump and No-Intro dat any kind of release. MAME seeks to preserve and emulate Karaoke more widely, as I very surface-level-understand.

Karaoke releases in general are usually CD+G format - Redbook audio tracks with "+G" graphics subchannel data that displays images (usually lyrics). VCD and even DVD-Video are common platform agnostic Karaoke formats as well.

Philips CD-i branded Karaoke discs I've crossed paths with thus far are CD-i Ready. Karaoke CD-i releases aren't super will documented, and as a video game archeologist who has tracked down countless rare / unknown releases for many systems - these CD-i Karaoke discs intrigue me.

There are at least a handful of Karaoke discs out of Sweden for example, but little documented as Swedish discs have proven tricky to track down in the past as my fellow redump comrades & I completed the preservation of PlayStation 1 Europe releases.

But the more well known / documented releases came out of the home of Philips, the Netherlands.

With the help of a Dutchie gentleman I was able to track down a good handful of the NL releases.

Among the releases is Karaoke Vol(ume) 1-4. Among them, I've found a couple variants - today I show off this one:



The two dumped match perfectly, which makes life a little easier. Dumping release variants is important to help confirm or rule out software revisions.

I'm uploading a handful of CD-i karaoke scans here at the moment - so enjoy poking around at them!

Widescreen Prank Disc

Titles like this are what I find straight up neat 'yo! Not only did the CD-i have real alpha cutting edge hardware systems like Bang&Oldson's massive TV entertainment system, but they released WIDESCREEN discs in the era of SD 4:3.


Now the first thing you'll notice about it is the words look really weird! It could be a foreign language because it has made-up funny sounding words like "uitgave van het". But I think these funny words are more likely an elaborate prank to make people think a language some created for laughs is real. I'll have to look more into it, but the words sound too goofy to be real ones.



Even more funny words! The prank continues!


The video info is encoded at a 4:3 ratio at a resolution of 368x272, but meant to be stretched out to a 16:9 aspect ratio by some kind of digi-magic. Here's the video content strungout and gaped with rough math to about a 16:9 AR.

The prank language continues, in video form! I feel like I'm in an episode of Borat.


Similarly, rosewood snapped up another funny language disc. This one I think is a real language though because it says "Made in Germany" so it's probably the German or maybe Austrian language (Austrian is a European country not to be confused with Australia).



You can download scans and rom for Breedbeeld here.

iKTV VCD

Hundreds of years ago - back before the dawn of video games - people used to find entertainment through the means of Karaoke. When participating in Karaoke drunk people torture each other with their terrible singing voices to see who can withstand hearing "Don't Stop Believing" fumbled through a dozen times over the course of the night.

Among the Karaoke systems was iKTV by Tao (sometimes "KES Karaoke Station" or "KES Video Karaoke Player"):

Behold! The pride and joy of many fine trailer park residents.


So what makes iKTV so special, and why did it come to my attention? Someone named Fireball said we need to add them into Redump.org for god knows what reason.

This sucker plays CDs, CD-Gs, VCDs, DVDs?, Video CDs (unlikely).


Club iKTV 02, a VCD. Download here.

One day when my 'tism flaired up, I combed through all the different versions of the official iKTV site on archive.org to catalog every disc sold on their site, often branded with the iKTV logo. These were of course, all VCD (although some had a "CD Video" logo on them, that seems very unlikely).

Club KES

  •  CLUB iKTV 001
  •  CLUB iKTV 002
  •  CLUB iKTV 003
  •  CLUB iKTV 004
  •  CLUB iKTV 005
Kids & Holiday
  •  Holiday Favorites [iKUH-001]
  •  Holiday Favorites [iKUH-002]
  •  Kids Classic (two discs) [CDC-007]
  •  KES Holiday (two discs) [CDC-018]
  •  Ubest Holiday 1 [IKUH-001]
  •  Ubest Holiday 2 [IKUH-002]
  •  #1 U-Best Children's Favorites! [IKUC-001]
  •  #2 U-Best Children's Favorites! [IKUC-002]
  •  #3 U-Best Children's Favorites! [IKUC-003]
  •  #4 U-Best Children's Favorites! [IKUC-004]
U-Best Pro
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 1 [iKU-001]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 2 [iKU-002]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 3 [iKU-003]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 4 [iKU-004]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 5 [iKU-005]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 6 [iKU-006]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 7 [iKU-007]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 8 [iKU-008]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 9 [iKU-009]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 10 [iKU-010]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 11 [iKU-011]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 12 [iKU-012]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 13 [iKU-013]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 14 [iKU-014]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 15 [iKU-015]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 16 [iKU-016]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 17 [iKU-017]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 18 [iKU-018]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 19 [iKU-019]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 20 [iKU-020]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 21 [iKU-021]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 22 [iKU-022]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 23 [iKU-023]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 24 [iKU-024]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 25 [iKU-025]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 26 [iKU-026]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 27 [iKU-027]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 28 [iKU-028]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 29 [iKU-029]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 30 [iKU-030]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 31 [iKU-031]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 32 [iKU-032]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 33 [iKU-033]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 34 [iKU-034]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 35 [iKU-035]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 36 [iKU-036]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 37 [iKU-037]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 38 [iKU-038]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 39 [iKU-039]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 40 [iKU-040]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 41 [iKU-041]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 42 [iKU-042]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 43 [iKU-043]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 44 [iKU-044]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 45 [iKU-045]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 46 [iKU-046]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 47 [iKU-047]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 48 [iKU-048]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 49 [iKU-049]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 50 [iKU-050]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 51 [iKU-051]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 52 [iKU-052]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 53 [iKU-053]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 54 [iKU-054]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 55 [iKU-055]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 56 [iKU-056]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 57 [iKU-057]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 58 [iKU-058]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 59 [iKU-059]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 60 [iKU-060]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 61 [iKU-061]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 62 [iKU-062]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 63 [iKU-063]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 64 [iKU-064]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 65 [iKU-065]
  •  U-Best Pro Karaoke 66 [iKU-066]
  •  Top Hits 1 [VCDA-001]
  •  Top Hits 2 [VCDA-002]
  •  Top Hits 3 [VCDA-003]
  •  Top Hits 4 [VCDA-004]
  •  Top Hits 5 [VCDA-005]
  •  Top Hits 6 [VCDA-006]
  •  Top Hits 7 [VCDA-007]
  •  Top Hits 8 [VCDA-008]
  •  Top Hits 9 [VCDA-009]
  •  Top Hits 10 [VCDA-010]
  •  Top Hits 11 [VCDA-011]
  •  Top Hits 12 [VCDA-012]
  •  Top Hits 13 [VCDA-013]
  •  Top Hits 14 [VCDA-014]
  •  Top Hits 15 [VCDA-015]
  •  Top Hits 16 [VCDA-016]
  •  Top Hits 17 [VCDA-017]
  •  Top Hits 18 [VCDA-018]
  •  Top Hits 19 [VCDA-019]
  •  Top Hits 20 [VCDA-020]
  •  Top Hits 21 [VCDA-021]
  •  Top Hits 22 [VCDA-022]
  •  Top Hits 23 [VCDA-023]
  •  Top Hits 24 [VCDA-024]
  •  Top Hits 25 [VCDA-025]
  •  Top Hits 26 [VCDA-026]
  •  Top Hits 27 [VCDA-027]
  •  Top Hits 28 [VCDA-028]
  •  Top Hits 29 [VCDA-029]
  •  Top Hits 30 [VCDA-030]
  •  Top Hits 31 [VCDA-031]
  •  Top Hits 32 [VCDA-032]
  •  Top Hits 33 [VCDA-033]
  •  Top Hits 34 [VCDA-034]
  •  Top Hits 35 [VCDA-035]
  •  Top Hits 36 [VCDA-036]
  •  Top Hits 37 [VCDA-037]
  •  Top Hits 38 [VCDA-038]
  •  Top Hits 39 [VCDA-039]
  •  Top Hits 40 [VCDA-040]
  •  Top Hits 41 [VCDA-041]
  •  Top Hits 42 [VCDA-042]
U-Best Latin
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-001]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-002]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-003]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-004]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-005]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-006]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-007]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-008]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-009]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-010]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-011]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-012]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-013]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-014]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-015]
  •  U-Best Latin [iKUL-016]
Original Footage
  • Note the "Original Footage" series was released both as VCD and DVD. This miss list refers to the VCD version.
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 1 [VCD-001]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 2 [VCD-002]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 3 [VCD-003]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 4 [VCD-004]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 5 [VCD-005]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 6 [VCD-006]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 7 [VCD-007]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 8 [VCD-008]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 9 [VCD-009]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 10 [VCD-010]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 11 [VCD-011]
  •  Original Footage: Music Video Karaoke Volume 12 [VCD-012]
References

CD-i Wizard

 Pete Townshed is a name that some really old people might know. He played the harmonica in a band called the Guess Who?, got arrested for cp, but did you know he had a CD-i branded VCD release and an accompanying demo in CD-i Ready format?

[This is where I would normally post a video,

but since it's music, I'd probably end up

doing more time than Pete Townshend did.]

With the CD-i Ready demo you can jam out to the tracks on your audio CD player or enjoy some music videos in your CD-i system.

Whoa look at this old guy upside down. Boomer edge.

Since Peter Townsend is such a popular guy, you'll have to cough up the high price of 3.49$ on discogs.com to win this gem into your collection. Save up, it's worth it. Who am I kidding, I didn't watch it - your value may vary.

The neato thing here is to see a VCD release with a CD-i Ready promo. That's pretty novel if you ask me.

Demo scans on archive.org.